A Man of the People (13 page)

car. They said five matchets were found in your car and two double-barrelled guns. Anyway they have now withdrawn the case.' My thoughts were slowly coming into focus. 'What day is the election?' 'I don't know.' 'Say you won't tell me, but not that you don't know,' I said petulantly. 'Could I have my radio?' 'Not yet; the doctor says you are to rest.' The next day I asked again and if only to save himself from my pestering importunity he said yes, the thugs had ransacked my car, overturned it and set it on fire; then after I had been brought to hospital I was placed under arrest ostensibly for having weapons in my car but really to prevent me from signing my nomination paper. 'Nomination paper? But I have already signed it,' I said. 'No, that first one never reached the Electoral Officer. It was seized by thugs from your people on their way to the Electoral Office...' I tried to sit up but he pressed me back; not that I could have made it, anyway. 'Now I have told you. Don't ask me any more questions, do you hear me? Even in this hospital you cannot say who is a friend and who an enemy. That is why I am here so much.' He said this quietly and with a backward glance. 'Max came here in person with a new nomination paper for you but they turned him back.' 'I see.' It was in fact election day as we spoke. My father found it easy to conceal the fact from me because they had put me in a special isolated ward. That same night Max was killed in Abaga but I didn't hear of it either, until two days after; and then I wept all day that day, and the pressure inside my head returned and I hoped I would die, but the doctor put me to sleep. As I got the story later from Joe, the trade-unionist, Max had been informed by our party intelligence that Chief Koko's resourceful wife was leading the Women's Wing of the P. O. P. in an operation that one might describe as breast-feeding the ballot, i. e. smuggling into the polling booths wads of ballot paper concealed in their brassières. Max immediately investigated. But as soon as he alighted from his car, one of Chief Koko's jeeps swept up from behind, knocked him over and killed him on the spot. The police, most of whom turned out to be disguised party thugs, performed half-hearted motions to arrest the driver of the jeep but Chief S. I. Koko came forward and told them not to worry; he would handle the matter himself. Eunice had been missed by a few inches when Max had been felled. She stood like a stone figure, I was told, for some minutes more. Then she opened her handbag as if to take out a handkerchief, took out a pistol instead and fired two bullets into Chief Koko's chest. Only then did she fall down on Max's body and begin to weep like a woman; and then the policemen seized her and dragged her away. A very strange girl, people said. The fighting which broke out that night between Max's bodyguard and Chief Koko's thugs in Abaga struck a match and lit the tinder of discontent in the land. Nearer home in Anata Chief Nanga, having been elected unopposed, tried to disband his private army, if only to save himself their keep; but some of them refused to be disbanded and staged a minor battle in which Dogo (the one- eyed bodyguard) lost an ear. Then they went on a rampage, sacking one market after another in the district, seizing women's wares and beating up people. My father's youngest wife lost her entire stock of dried fish in our village market during one of their raids and got a swollen face instead. Other election thugs in different parts of the country hearing of the successes of Chief Nanga's people quickly formed their own bands of marauders. And so a minor reign of terror began. Meanwhile the Prime Minister had appointed Chief Nanga and the rest of the old Cabinet back to office and announced over the radio that he intended to govern and stamp out subversion and thuggery without quarter or mercy. He assured foreign investors that their money was safe in the country, that his government stood 'as firm as the Rock of Gibraltar' by its open-door economic policy. 'This country,' he said, 'has never been more united or more stable than it is today.' He nominated Chief Koko's widow to the Senate and from there made her Minister for Women's Affairs, intending to quieten the powerful guild of Bori market women who had become restive. Some political commentators have said that it was the supreme cynicism of these transactions that inflamed the people and brought down the Government. That is sheer poppycock. The people themselves, as we have seen, had become even more cynical than their leaders and were apathetic into the bargain. 'Let them eat,' was the people's opinion, 'after all when white men used to do all the eating did we commit suicide?' Of course not. And where is the all-powerful white man today? He came, he ate and he went. But we are still around. The important thing then is to stay alive; if you do you will outlive your present annoyance. The great thing, as the old people have told us, is reminiscence; and only those who survive can have it. Besides, if you survive, who knows? it may be your turn to eat tomorrow. Your son may bring home your share. No, the people had nothing to do with the fall of our Government. What happened was simply that unruly mobs and private armies having tasted blood and power during the election had got out of hand and ruined their masters and employers. And they had no public reason whatever for doing it. Let's make no mistake about that. One day just before I left hospital Edna came to see me. We looked at each other without speaking. What could I say about that letter in which I had called her an uneducated girl and said many other crude things besides? But attack, they say, is the best defence. So I attacked. 'Congratulations,' I said. 'I will never contest his seat again.' I smiled falsely. She said nothing, just stood where she was, staring at me with those round, rock-melting eyes. 'I am terribly sorry, Edna,' I said. 'I have behaved like an animal... I will always remember that in all that crowd you were the only one who tried to help me.' My eyes clouded. 'Don't cry,' I said when I looked at her again and found my tears running down her face. 'Please, my love, don't. Come and sit here.' And SHE DID. 'Edna, I don't know... I feel like a beast... believe me... about that letter... I was so unhappy... you can't imagine how miserable I was. Will you ever forgive me?' 'Forgive you? For what? Everything you said in it is true.' 'Oh please don't talk like that, Edna. I know how you must feel. But please I didn't mean to... you know. I was so confused and I didn't want to... I didn't want you to go and marry that idiot. That was why... To God...' I tried instinctively to seal the oath by touching my lips and pointing to the sky with my swearing finger, forgetting momentarily in my confusion that my right arm was in plaster. I was reminded soon enough, and changed to my left finger which felt odd. 'Marry him? To be frank with you I did not want to marry him... All the girls in the college were laughing at me... It was only my father... I don't claim to know book but at least...' 'Oh please, Edna---' '... at least I thank God that I am better than some people with all their minister and everything. He is no better than any bush, jaguda man, with all his money. And what you said, about his wife's jealousy---' 'Wait a bit,' I said, something having clicked inside my head and told me to pay some attention to what the other party was saying. 'Wait a bit. Are we talking about my first letter or the second?' 'Second? Which second letter? Did you write two?' 'Yes, after I came to see you,' I said and then said to myself: Don't let up man! Attack and cover your defences. 'Yes, when I came to see you and you made me so miserable... I wrote; you mean you didn't get it?' 'No, I did not. After you came to see me?... It must be one of those the postmaster handed over to him.' 'Postmaster? I don't understand.' 'Oh, you didn't hear? The postmaster and the man are like this.' She dovetailed her fingers. 'He was passing all my letters to him.' 'No! What a beast!' 'Have you ever seen a thing like that? It was only God that saved me from his hands.' 'God and Odili.' 'Yes, and Odili... What did you say in it?' 'In what? Oh the letter... Yes, well, the usual things.' 'Tell me.' 'I will, later. Let's talk about new things now, about our future plans.' After a short silence of contemplation on this unbelievable piece of good fortune I said somewhat light-heartedly: 'A whole Cabinet Minister prying into a little girl's love-letters!' 'Have you ever seen such bad luck!' said Edna, and then something seemed to dawn on her and she asked: 'But who is a little girl?' I smiled and squeezed her hand, then pursued my own thoughts aloud. 'The inquisitive eye will only blind its own sight,' I pronounced. 'A man who insists on peeping into his neighbour's bedroom knowing a woman to be there is only punishing himself.' It was then Edna's turn to squeeze my good hand. We heard my father's voice greeting the nurse in the main ward and Edna quickly got up from my bed and sat on a chair. 'Ah, my daughter!' he said. 'You have kept away so long. I began to think I had frightened you away.' 'No, sir,' she said embarrassed. 'Frightened her away? How?' 'I told her I was going to marry her for one of my sons that day she spent a whole night with us here...' 'So it wasn't a dream?' 'What dream?' 'Never mind, father. What I mean is you should marry her for this son here.' 'That remains to be seen.' After my illness my father, some of his close relatives and I went with a big pot of palm-wine to Edna's father to start a 'conversation'. The first few visits we made no headway at all. Our host simply refused to believe that he had lost a Chief and Minister as son-in-law and must now settle for this crazy boy who had bought a tortoise and called it a car. But the Army obliged us by staging a coup at that point and locking up every member of the Government. The rampaging bands of election thugs had caused so much unrest and dislocation that our young Army officers seized the opportunity to take over. We were told Nanga was arrested trying to escape by canoe dressed like a fisherman. Thereafter we made rapid progress with Edna's father who, no doubt, saw me then as a bird in hand. He told us that Chief Nanga had paid a bride-price of one hundred and fifty pounds for his daughter and another one hundred pounds on her education and other incidentals. Was that all? I thought. 'Our custom,' said my father firmly, 'is to return the bride-price---finish. Other bits and pieces must be the man's loss. Is that not the custom?' Our party said yes, that was the custom. As indeed it was. But I was not interested in legalistic- traditional arguments just now, especially when they were calculated to delay things (a coup might be followed by a counter coup and then where would we be?); and anyway I did not want to go through life thinking that I owed Chief Nanga money spent on my wife's education. So I agreed---to my people's astonishment---to pay everything. 'Let us go outside and whisper together,' said my scandalized relations. I said a flat no and they shrugged their acquiescence, astonished at my firmness---and pleased, because we admire firmness. I had already decided privately to borrow the money from C. P. C. funds still in my hands. They were not likely to be needed soon, especially as the military regime had just abolished all political parties in the country and announced they would remain abolished 'until the situation became stabilized once again'. They had at the same time announced the impending trial of all public servants who had enriched themselves by defrauding the state. The figure involved was said to be in the order of fifteen million pounds. But their most touching gesture as far as I was concerned was to release Eunice from jail and pronounce Max a Hero of the Revolution. (For I must point out that my severe criticism of his one fatal error notwithstanding, Max was indeed a hero and martyr; and I propose to found a school---a new type of school, I hasten to add---in my village to his memory.) What I found distasteful however was the sudden, unashamed change of front among the very people who had stood by and watched him die. Overnight everyone began to shake their heads at the excesses of the last regime, at its graft, oppression and corrupt government: newspapers, the radio, the hitherto silent intellectuals and civil servants---everybody said what a terrible lot; and it became public opinion the next morning. And these were the same people that only the other day had owned a thousand names of adulation, whom praise-singers followed with song and talking-drum wherever they went. Chief Koko in particular became a thief and a murderer, while the people who had led him on---in my opinion the real culprits---took the legendary bath of the Hornbill and donned innocence. 'Koko had taken enough for the owner to see,' said my father to me. It was the day I had gone to visit Eunice and was telling him on my return how the girl had showed no interest in anything---including whether she stayed in jail or out of it. My father's words struck me because they were the very same words the villagers of Anata had spoken of Josiah, the abominated trader. Only in their case the words had meaning. The owner was the village, and the village had a mind; it could say no to sacrilege. But in the affairs of the nation there was no owner, the laws of the village became powerless. Max was avenged not by the people's collective will but by one solitary woman who loved him. Had his spirit waited for the people to demand redress it would have been waiting still, in the rain and out in the sun. But he was lucky. And I don't mean it to shock or to sound clever. For I do honestly believe that in the fat- dripping, gummy, eat-and-let-eat regime just ended---a regime which inspired the common saying that a man could only be sure of what he had put away safely in his gut or, in language ever more suited to the times: 'you chop, me self I chop, palaver finish'; a regime in which you saw a fellow cursed in the morning for stealing a blind man's stick and later in the evening saw him again mounting the altar of the new shrine in the presence of all the people to whisper into the ear of the chief celebrant---in such a regime, I say, you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your mur derer in the chest---without asking to be paid.

The End